Do not confuse education with learning. They are two different things with two different possible outcomes. We need to understand their differences to use better our time and resources spent in teaching and learning.
Education
“Are you in the business of education or learning? I don’t do online education I do online learning.”
—Seth Godin
Why would I spend my time fruitfully listening to you while you are reading your notes to me? Where is the learning? Where is the value of that time spent together?
“Course” is a traditional concept of the education world. You put dozens of people into a room, and you feed them with the same material. How do you consider the usual (and welcome) differences in cognitive abilities, age, experience, attitudes, interests? You don’t.
Learning
“Education is what is done to you; learning is what you pursue based on your talents, passion and yearning to understand”
—David Orban
Wouldn’t it be better to have learning materials, slides, articles to be read in advance, and then meet the expert or the learning facilitator and have an engaging discussion?
This is more learning by doing, and I learn more when I am engaged, in the first person, with concepts and questions, rather than passively listening to somebody reading.
What about learning projects? Something organized with experts, doing the actual job, by creating the possibility to share, in the field, practical knowledge. Learning on the job would be more effective and efficient. Not considering the creation of a bond and the social interactions between learners. A natural community of interest could also see the light out of a learning project.
Less Teaching, More Learning, Please
The business of education is made by those people and organizations making money out of focusing themselves on teaching. The business of learning is made, instead, by whom get focused on people learning. We need more learning and less teaching.
The essence of Experiential Learning is about transforming experience into learning. Jake introduced John’Dewey’s Pattern of Inquiry and some areas of application:
Project-Based Learning
Service Learning
Place-Centered Learning
Adventure Learning.
Patterns of Inquiry in four steps
Jake guided us through a mental experiment. I like one of the quotes he mentioned:
“An experience is valuable only if it leads to another experience.”
From my memory of what Jake attributed to John Dewey.
To which I add some others I’ve found:
“To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry — these are the essentials of thinking.”
He then exposed the four steps of Patterns of Inquiry.
1. Experience
Choose the experience you want to reflect upon.
Example: “Choose the best, most interesting pastry you’ve ever had.”
2. Reflection
“Break down the experience” from an inedible raw experience to extracting its nutrients.
Think about taste, textures, sounds, environment, all the sensual experience.
Draw it. Or write about it.
Reflect is the fermentation process (in the metaphor of baking he used)
By reflecting, the experience unfolds. Anything can be unfolded. Otherwise, it remains raw.
3. Analysis
Start mixing.
Compare with others’ experiences.
Compare with your other experiences.
In the flour analogy, you’re starting to add eggs and sugar.
What was uniquely good? Uniquely special? What was experienced for the first time?
4. Onward!
Baking. Tell stories about these experiences.
Share. Publishing
Places for experiential education
1. Place-Based Learning
At home. or in special places.
“Oven in Costarica”. Centered around a place. It can be powerful.
2. Service Learning
Helping someone or volunteering.
Donating time, objects, work.
3. Project-Based Learning
It’s about a product. A museum exhibit. A piece of art. There is an artifact of learning.
4. Adventure Learning
Out in the woods with kids or adults.
You need to reflect or come up with stories.
Out of comfort zone.
Participants bond and reflect.
The fermentation starts
It was nice and sweet. I’ve learned some key concepts from one of the most influential educators of our times. I’ve also spent some time in conversations with Jake and the other participants to explore the Patterns of Inquiry application to my PKM Systems and my blogging practice.
I had fun and stimuli. It was an excellent learning event.
I’m doing a crazy experiment. Instead of researching and reporting, I will write down what I know about data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.
I need to clarify those concepts to follow up on my article series on Personal Knowledge Management. How is each of those entities taking part in it, and in which phases?
I am two meters tall. I know that. So this is knowledge because I’ve measured myself using a meter. So if I want to measure the height of the population, I would need a measurement tool. And I would need to measure all of the people and write down their sizes. In the form of a number, writing, with a measurement unit, is a piece of data.
What is information?
If I store all of the population heights and make some analysis, I could say things about the population height, like the average height is one meter and 75. That would become a piece of information.
If I put data into a context, it becomes information. Information is data communicated. So I need to talk to you when I tell you that I’ve grabbed some data about my height, and I share with you the information that I am two meters tall.
What’s the difference between data and information?
Data could be just a number on its own without context. Does it become information when I say I am two meters tall? That is, of course, information. It’s information because I’m setting the context. So whose height is that one? It’s my height.
So data is just numbers. But data can also be a state: ‘on’ and ‘off,’ ‘true’ or ‘false.’
So true or false is data. If I say this variable, “status,” equals true, that becomes information about the variable named “status.”
What is knowledge?
Knowledge comes from the verb “to know” (right?). And to know something, you need a brain able to understand and learn that information to be stored in memory. If I read the information about a meter at my head’s mark, I know that “two meters” is the data. The information, in that context, is my height. And knowledge means that I know now that I am two meters tall, and I can communicate this information to you, and it will become your knowledge.
How is communication involved?
There’s communication in between, depending on how effectively I am communicating it to you and how well you understand this information, it might become your knowledge or not.
It seems that the more you move from data towards knowledge, you’re going from the outside of the world towards the inside of your mind. You are sensing data, that becomes information because you give meaning to it. And then you learn it, you know it, it becomes knowledge, something that’s personal, it’s in your mind.
The same happens when I want to communicate this information to a third person because I am the “outside” for that person I am “other.” When I communicate something, I am sending audiovisual information through the air and light to them, and they receive data that will, in turn, interpret as information. They might then know it or forget about it.
What’s the role of memory?
Memory is fundamental to know something because if I don’t remember things, how can I know?
If I lose my memory, I would forget my name. So I don’t know my name. I don’t have that knowledge. But that information is stored on my ID card because there are my photograph and my name on it. The name written on the ID card is the data since it is associated with the birth date. A picture is a piece of information contextual to me, and I could learn again what my name is (Vercingetorige if I remember correctly) if I look at it.
What is wisdom?
You are wise when you make appropriate decisions based on your knowledge. The highest goal for a human being should be to live a good life, taking for granted that we know and share the meaning of living a good life. You need to have criteria to judge if you’re living or not a good life, and they could be your own or the judgments of somebody else. If this makes sense, how do you live a good life? By doing the right actions by taking and maintaining the right behaviors, you can do that by making the right decisions. So if I make a lot of right choices, I’m wise. So what is wisdom? Wisdom is the appropriate application of knowledge to my actions.
Good? Bad? Fun!
I will do proper research to see how much the definitions of data, information, knowledge, and wisdom are matching my impromptu ones. It’s fun! Come with me! Let’s Learn Out Loud!
The best way to learn is to teach. One of the best ways to teach is to follow the Feynman Technique of learning.
I am reducing this teaching and learning method using the 1-2-3 Creative technique so it would become:
Explain the concept you want to learn using simple language as you were teaching it to someone else.
Identify unclear areas. If needed, review the original sources.
Simplify all difficult parts of the concepts.
You could facilitate your journey through the three steps by asking questions.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
—probably not Einstein.
Even I can understand this.
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